


an invention

by andorgyny



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 07:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1502657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andorgyny/pseuds/andorgyny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You keep using that word, she starts as her feet lead her away, tongue firmly set between her teeth. I do not think it means what you think it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an invention

**Author's Note:**

> Written for challenge 79 at TTU. One line belongs to The Princess Bride, and the end is from Human Nature. But you already knew that, you sexy, clever reader, you.
> 
> * * *

  
She sees him sitting in the middle of a street one rainy night.

“What are you doing down there?” she asks as she stands in front of him. The rain bleeds through her dress.

“Looking for a way to get back to you.”

“Oh.”

She leaves him to his fruitful search and the raindrops on his tongue.

 

 

“Are you going to sit there every night?”

“What else can I do?” A blue bird lands on his pinstriped knee.

“Build a cannon and fly to me.”

He raises an eyebrow. “That’s impossible, Rose.”

“You keep using that word,” she starts as her feet lead her away, tongue firmly set between her teeth. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

 

 

 

“If things were to get a little steamy one night, that’d just be me having a shag with the psychical manifestation of my anguish and guilt, wouldn’t it?”

She nods over her cup of tea. “Might as well be relieving yourself in the shower.”

He studies her for a moment. “Why are you wearing Howard’s dressing gown? It’s pouring out here.”

“Someone in this brain needs to get some sleep, might as well be the delusion.”

He lies back, head splashing in a puddle. “You were never this cold when you were with me.”

Rose laughs. “That’s ‘cause your subconscious can’t do me justice.”

The blue bird vworp vworps at him. “Yeah.”

 

 

“How do I know this isn’t real?”

She rolls her eyes. “For one, when we’re here your gob doesn’t run like it’s going out of fashion. And I’m rather awful to you, aren’t I? It’s like you expect I’d be, I dunno, angry or bitter or hateful toward you because I fell.”

“You didn’t fall, you were caught–”

“Doctor.” She kneels beside him on the wet pavement, all pink and yellow but a bit gray and tired. “Believe what you like, but only when you accept what is real will you be able to move on.” He feels cherry lips (soured by his fading memory) on his. “Or save me. The Void doesn’t kill, it just… is.”

He reaches for her waist, because he just needs her lithe frame against his, right here, right in this rainy street, but she’s nowhere/when again.

“It hurts, Rose.”

 

 

The blue bird pecks his scalp and builds a nest in his hair.

She sits beside him and holds his hand each night.

“I’m sorry, Doctor.”

Until she stops.

 

 

_In my dreams, she keeps walking away._

* * *


End file.
